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 Remember that one relative who, at every party and social gathering, thrusts the same dance moves even when the song has changed? ‘Happy Phirr Bhaag Jayegi’ is the movie version of that person. This ensemble broad com­edy is a dance of mindless slapstick foot chases, cross-dressings and run­ning jokes that one way or the other aim to mime comedy by poking fun at national stereotypes. The film is a sequel to the 2016’s ‘Happy Bhaag Jayegi’. The original film was about a run-away Indian bride Happy (Diana Penty) acciden­tally landing up in Pakistan. It was a breezy comedy of manners with small town aesthetics that also raked in a decent box office return. The follow up is set in China and writ­er-director Mudassar Aziz has been handed a bigger budget which he blows up in remolding the franchise into a template that makes it more like the ‘Hangover’ films.

Character-driven humor comes from characters being themselves, but Aziz’s script tries to milk humor by throwing these characters into situations that feel forced and out of context. What begins as a mistaken identity comedy treacherously nose­dives into a ridiculous cross-country road trip that also sees the char­acters trying to break through a high-security Chinese jail.

The plot runs on two Happys. The first Happy (Diana Penty) and her musician husband Guddu (Ali Fazal) are in Shanghai after Guddu is invited to perform at a musical concert. The second Happy (Sonakshi Sinha) is a horticulturist joining a Chinese university as a lecturer. They land in Shanghai from the same flight. Their identities get mixed up in the airport and soon the horti­culturist Happy finds herself in the den of Chinese gangsters. They mis­take her for the other Happy, who, meanwhile, is whisked to the university and asked about her thoughts on bonsai plants.

In the midst of all this, the Chinese gangsters are also quick to kidnap Bagga ( Jimmy Shergill), the groom who Happy left at the altar to marry Guddu, and Afridi (Piyush Mishra), the Pakistani cop who was Happy’s reluctant ally in the first film. The gangsters press Bagga and Afridi to connive Happy into carrying out their plan, which involves redeem­ing a China-Pakistan business deal that has gone wrong. But before Bagga and Afridi can meet Happy, she manages to run away from the den and meets another Indian named Khushwant ( Jassie Gill) at a karaoke bar.

Khushwant, we later learn, is an interpreter at the Indian Embassy, and has been recently dumped. One thing leads to another until the wrong Happy, Bagga, Afridi and Khushwant, all form a team to dodge the Chinese gangsters and to help the horticulturist Happy on a per­sonal quest that takes the four of them on a wild-goose chase from one Chinese city to another.

Of all the actors, Shergill and Mishra come across well with their tongue-in-cheek verbal duels. But the central character of Sonakshi Sinha leaves you unsatisfied. Her performance feels awkward and low in energy throughout, as if she did the movie only because she would get to do some sightseeing. Jassie Gill, who’s the lead opposite Sinha, is so uninspiring that he’s dwarfed by the supporting actors.

‘Happy Phirr Bhaag Jayegi’ feels excruciatingly exhaustive because it tries to march with juvenile and crass jokes. The villains of the movie are so weakly written and driven by so laughable a motive that they never pose a real threat to the pro­tagonists. Unfortunately, the film runs out of urgency, tension, humor and entertainment well before it hits the finish line O

Kagti is no doubt well versed in sports because she designs screen­play solely based on genre con­ventions. She takes a relatively unknown chapter in Indian sports history and leafs through it with exaggerated tension and antiseptic characterization. One after another, people grace the screen mouthing patriotic one-liners about freedom, nation and brotherhood. They talk and act like movie people, and not for once does Kagti try to draw real emotions from these folks, who, we’re told, are real.

Protagonist Tapan Das is modeled on the archetypal coach in sports movie. So by that ritual, Das is some­one who puts his hockey before his family. For a has-been, he has to prove to the federation, his play­ers and to himself that he still can bounce back. Then there are famil­iar sports movie troupes like “you don’t play for yourself but you play for the team” and “tussles between blue blooded players and working class players”. The film manages to incorporate every textbook move to fill its 170 minutes of run time.

In the past few years, Akshay Kumar has released many films that tap nationalistic sentiments. He has already taken up the baton of being the Manoj Kumar of his generation. But he pushes too hard as a dramatic actor in Gold, putting on a Bengali accent and engaging in his many jovial antics. But Kumar delivers Tapan Das with unruly effect. He’s delightful in the film’s lighter moments with actress Mouni Roy, who plays Tapan’s demanding yet loyal wife, while in scenes that demand intensity, Kumar under­performs, which many may mistake for subtlety.

The film also boasts talented actors like Kunal Kapoor, Vineet Kumar Singh, Amit Sadh and Sunny Kaushal. Their performances are commendable. One would think that if the script had given them more space to grow, they could have made a more lasting impression.

Coming to the hockey games, Kagti gives them a distinctly mod­ern touch. The way the players carry themselves doesn’t have the sense of yesteryears’ rawness. They feel polished and too pleasing to the eye. The climactic game has its moments and is played out with great tempo. But until then Gold digresses a lot; the finale deserved a better buildup.

With good backing from stars and studios, biopic sports films are hav­ing a great run in Bollywood. But films like ‘Gold’ suggest filmmakers need to get out of the shadow of safe genre filmmaking if they want this type of film to sustain for long.

Action/Adventure

THE MEG

CAST: Jason Statham, Rainn Wilson, Li Bingbing, Winston Chao

DIRECTION: Jon Turteltaub

1 and half stars

When I first saw the trailer of ‘The Meg’ I thought it was a reboot of ‘Jaws’, the popular monster shark-film series. However, it’s a Chinese-American coproduction that has got noth­ing to do with the series and is instead based on a novel of Ameri­can writer Steve Alten. Action star Jason Statham is Jonas Taylor, a deep-sea rescue diver, who has to fight a predatory shark of massive and mythical proportions. If you’re an action film buff, the mere mention of Jason Statham versus a shark will make you anticipate a scene where Statham is punching the animal with his bare hands. So seeing Statham’s heroics mostly restricted to just pushing buttons and staring through screens make us won­der why the star’s tough-as-nails demeanor has been underused in a monster movie that could’ve done with a lot more of the regular Statham-ness.

For once, ‘The Meg’ isn’t a dramatically deep and existential­ist underwater exploration movie where the lead actor gets a chance to show his inner Daniel Day-Lewis. It is a full-blown potboiler, packed in with so many layers of storyline that it stretches into a slack and boring affair without inspiring any moments of suspense or high tension.

The story begins somewhere off-coast in China at a high-tech deep sea research center run by a team of scientists looking for life beyond the bottom surface of earth’s deep­est point, Mariana Trench. Winston Chao plays Dr Zhang, the leader of the research team, and Rainn Wilson plays Morris, the Ameri­can billionaire who has funded the operation. When the film opens, Morris is visiting the place for the first time. As Dr Zhang and his daughter Suyin (Li Bingbing) give him the grand tour of the place, a three-crew submarine explor­ing the bottom Mariana Trench encounters a massive deep sea creature and loses contact.

They waste no time in locat­ing the washed out deep sea res­cue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) and asking for his help to get the submarine team out of the bot­tom of the ocean. Meanwhile the scientists at the research center assess whether or not they have angered a monster which appears to be a megalodon, the prehistoric 60-foot shark believed to be extinct a long time ago.

Director Jon Turteltaub does not offer anything new to the genre. The film’s overall aim appears to be a children-friendly family enter­tainer so many sequences don’t so much shock and awe but only try to please the crowd.

The CGI is average too. There aren’t any exciting moments that leap at you or catch you off-guard. For the majority of the film you just sink in your seats and watch the mechan­ical storytelling unfold. Even when the titular monster Meg makes an on screen appear­ance, it fails to stir mayhem and dread. The monster shark deserved a better development. Revealing its monstrosity through just expository dialogues does nothing to make the creature scar­ier when the visuals don’t comple­ment the verbal build up.

Besides Statham’s scowls and frowns that make up his rusty per­formance, the rest of the film’s international cast comes across as if they signed up to the project for the paycheck not because they found their characters interesting. Li Bingbing’s Suyin is so incon­sistently written that we see her quickly switch from someone who is skeptical of Statham’s Jonas for his rash methods to someone who is swept off her feet as soon as she sees Jonas’ ripped body. There are many deliberate moments to romantically involve Jonas and Suyin but each of these moments feels forced and out of sync with the overall movie.

‘The Meg’ is a big budget movie with low energy and no refreshing ideas to make it stand out. This is the kind of film which would’ve worked better with a focused story and edgier thrills. In its current shape, it doesn’t have the teeth to grab the audience till the end!

Romantic Drama

KAIRA

CAST: Aaryan Sigdel, Samragyee RL Shah

DIRECTION: Laxman Rijal

1 stars

‘Kaira’ curiously brings together Aaryan Sigdel, the once popular lead-man of Nepali romantic films, and Samragyee RL Shah, the busiest Nepali actress today, in two and half hours of unbearably bad tourism promotion video of the Philippines that only masquerades as a romantic drama. Director Laxman Rijal pilots a movie that takes off without a destination in mind, meanders without any narrative focus and finally crash lands towards the most unimaginative and tediously formulaic climax: the film tries to win sympathy points by abruptly revealing that one of the characters suffers from an untreatable mental disease.

Sigdel is Jay, a singer and bar-owner in the Philippines. He’s established in sweep­ing shots over rooftops, streets and parks, singing with his band. We soon find that he has cut his ties with Nepal and lives in the Philippines, all because he’s trying to get over a girl. So he parties hard and goes to bed with a different girl every night. Sigdel’s character feels heav­ily inspired by Karan Johar’s ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ where Ranbir Kapoor played a lovelorn musician. In fact there are many elements borrowed from the Bollywood movie, especially the circumstances that separate the leads and the climax that involves the aforementioned disease.

Samragyee RL Shah is the titular Kaira, the girl who broke Jay’s heart in Kath­mandu. One day she shows up in Jay’s bar, apologizes for whatever happened and suggests they start fresh. Jay is hesitant at first but later agrees and they spend the next few days sightseeing the locales of the Philippines, challenging each other to dance in public places and counting stars. Things get drowsy and dull from then on as the screenplay switches back and forth between the present and the events that happened back in Kathmandu.

Given the unremarkably soapy nature of the story, the only way ‘Kaira’ would’ve ever worked is through the easy chemistry between the leads. But Sigdel and Shah offer no spark. What they do is sputter along with their awkward acting. The corny conversation they have makes it hard for us to buy them as made for each other.

In one scene Kaira gazes at the sky and expresses her desire to count the stars. Jay finds this cute and encourages her to start counting. There are instances like this where we feel the middle-aged Sigdel is not romancing the young Shah but babysitting her. She giggles a lot and he looks at her sleepily. They talk to each other about living life to the fullest and following one’s dreams, as if in their free time all they do is read self-help books and memorize lines from ‘1001 Inspirational Quotes’.

The two lovers don’t feel human even for a moment; they are so wooden and mechanically brought together that their romantic crisis is never intriguing.

‘Kaira’ comes across as a long-long movie. There’s so much talking, walking, drinking, puking, crying, singing and danc­ing that you can’t stop fidgeting in your seats or flip out your phone and start scroll­ing Facebook. This film singlehandedly demonstrates what happens if you mistreat the cinematic medium only as a showcase for rich locations and good-looking actors at the expense of a compelling story.

Who should watch it?

I’m lost figuring who the intended audience of this soapy melodrama could be. If you’re an unabashed Aaryan Sigdel fan, I won’t stop you. But ‘Kaira’ has nothing special to offer. It’s a movie made from yesteryears’ cinematic sensibilities and easily forgettable.

Action/Thriller

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT

CAST: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Sean Harris

DIRECTION: Christopher McQuarrie

4 and a half stars

Hollywood action movies are like fast food, something you consume not for its health benefits but to appease your taste buds. Tom Cruise knows this better. With his hallmark character Ethan Hunt, the 56-year-old international action star has kept it real in serving up his more than 22-year-old tent-pole franchise ‘Mission Impossible’ that has upped the bar for action genre, a genre which has otherwise been completely dominated by superhero movies. The series was adapted from a 60s TV show featuring secret US agents working for a fictional intelligence agency named the Impossible Mis­sion Force (IMF) that deploys them in high-stakes missions to save the world. Cruise’s version kicked off in 1996 and the latest installment ‘Fallout’ is the sixth outing of super-agent Ethan Hunt. It’s surreal to see a series outdoing itself with each new sequel.

Both Hunt and the franchise have done the impossible and improved in tone and approach over these years. Hunt has grown from a boyish daredevil to an emotionally mature one. And the series, as it is handed from one ace director to another, has been able to stay rel­evant to new generation of action fans with its original and grand action set pieces.

The new mission pits Hunt and his team against a terrorist group known as the Apostles. This group is made up of the remaining members of the anarchist organization called the Syndicate that Hunt’s team suc­cessfully infiltrated, capturing its leader Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) in the previous film ‘Rogue Nation’. This time Hunt is after the leader of the Apostles, someone named John Lark, who wants to get his hands on three plutonium spheres to equip nuclear weapons that will wipe out one third of world population and create a new order.

On Hunt’s side are Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stick­ell (Ving Rhames) and a new CIA operative August Walker (Henry Cavill), who is there to track Hunt’s each and every move and report it back to his superior. Then there’s ex-British secret agent Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), who criss­crosses Hunt’s plan to recover the plutonium spheres.

‘Mission Impossible’ is known for its breathtaking action sequences. Hunt sparring with villains on the roof of a speeding bullet train, Hunt sprinting in the narrow alleys of Shanghai or Hunt dangling from Burj Khalifa. Even when these sin­gularly spectacular action moments from the past films are fresh in our minds, ‘Fallout’ never plays the safe game and gives the audiences what they want: a high-stakes plot pep­pered with edge-of-your-seat action.

The real charm of ‘Fallout’ is Tom Cruise giving his everything to make Ethan Hunt an empathetic action hero. With so much climbing, jump­ing and diving that Cruise does in his action avatars, clocking at least one action film a year, he plays Hunt with remarkable energy as if the film’s frantic pace flows from his character’s bloodstream. Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie throws Cruise in one dangerous situation after another, giving him little breathing space. If it wasn’t for Cruise’s unwavering dedication, the action pieces would’ve fallen flat.

But ‘Fallout’ isn’t all about stunts and Ethan Hunt leaping from every­thing and everywhere. McQuarrie is thoughtful in using the story and characters to drive the big stunts. His screenplay explores the inner dynamics of Hunt’s friendship with teammates Benji and Luther, chips in a romantic thread between Hunt and Faust, and wonderfully plays with Hunt’s conflicted loyalty with his own government.

So McQuarrie punches in a dra­matically charged script with his technically brilliant filmmaking. ‘Fallout’ may or may not be the final film of this exceptional series, but it is by far the most enjoyable and best adventure of Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt.

Romantic Drama

DHADAK

CAST: Ishaan Khatter, Janhvi Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana

DIRECTION: Shashank Khaitan

1 and half stars

In the small town of Udaipur, India, a boy falls in love with a girl. Madhukar (Ishaan Khatter) is the only son of a family that run a modest eatery while Parthavi (Jan­hvi Kapoor) comes from a high caste Rajput family led by her patriarch father (Ashutosh Rana) with political ambitions. It’s easy to guess where the story goes from here. ‘Dhadak’ is pitched as the tradi­tional Romeo-Juliet love story where doomed lovers Madhukar and Par­thavi have to battle great odds to save their love. The only reason for a conventional ‘Dhadak’ to exist when off-beat small town romantic dramas like ‘Barielly ki Barfi’, ‘Dum Lagake Haisa’ and ‘Subh Mangal Savadhan’ are working their magic is that it’s a remake of the highly suc­cessful Marathi film ‘Sairat’, which is just two years old.

Unlike writer/director Nagraj Man­jule’s ‘Sairat’ that was made on a low budget of 4 crores and cast first time actors with no film industry connec­tions, ‘Dhadak’ is produced by Bol­lywood’s leading film studio Dharma Production, owned by Karan Johar, on a reported budget of 75 crores. And the film comes at a time when Bollywood’s A-list makers like Johar have been accused of favoring star kids over outsiders. ‘Dhadak’ too has been deemed as a launch pad for the late Bollywood diva Sridevi’s daughter (Janhvi Kapoor) and Sha­hid Kapoor’s younger step brother (Ishaan Khatter).

This needs to be highlighted to understand why the run-of-the-mill romantic plot felt refreshing in ‘Sairat’ and why it feels synthetic in ‘Dhadak’ even with big names and a mammoth budget. Nagraj Manjule, himself a dalit, crafted the original film’s caste conflict with devastating intimacy. The story might have been a tad clichéd but Manjule was able to engineer many tensed and heartfelt moments in the story that seam­lessly threaded together adolescent romance and vicious world of caste-based violence.

Shashank Khaitan, who directs the remake, gives us a sanitized world with lush production design and actors putting on fake Rajasthani accents. He’s reluctant to critique the Indian caste system and makes do with a parallel subplot of regional politics.

He paints the young Madhukar and Parthavi with such sketchy details that their romance seems like shallow puppy love, not something that has viewers fidgeting, praying for their budding love to survive the bone dry societal climate. Khaitan’s work is too breezy to evoke anything close to that feeling.

Much of the success of the orig­inal film has been credited to the majestic orchestra-driven musi­cal score and pulsating songs of composers Ajay-Atul. Their music has been reused in ‘Dhadak’ but Khaitan falters under the weight of his film’s grand visual look and frolicking touristy landscape that leave no space for the music to inject soul.

There’s nothing noteworthy in the young lead actors’ perfor­mances. Khatter is mawkish and impresses sparingly with his ever-ex­panding grin in the film’s lighter moments. He definitely shows range when the story shifts, as he easily grows broodier and less gooey-eyed. But his counterpart Janhvi Kapoor remains one note for most of the film. To look headstrong and bratty, Kapoor rigs up a stiff facial expression that doesn’t look one bit comfortable.

‘Dhadak’ is a flossy and less poetic version of ‘Sairat’. It gives no sign of cinematic ambition and looks like a quick cash grab marketing strategy of a big Indian film studio.

Sci-fi/Action/Adventure

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP

CAST: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michael Pena

DIRECTION: Peyton Reed

3 stars

‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ contin­ues the chronicles of Marvel’s lightweight and insect-sized superhero Ant-Man. In this edition we see Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) wear­ing his Ant-Man suit that enables him to both shrink and supersize, to pass through cracks and tricky spaces to help his mentor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hank’s daughter Hope aka The Wasp (Evan­geline Lilly) in their quest to bring back Hank’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has been trapped in a different quantum reality for 30 years. 2015’s ‘Ant-Man’ went through many production hiccups that, among others, saw director Edgar Wright walk out before shooting even began. Wright was replaced by Peyton Reed. But Reed and lead actor Paul Rudd were able to prove the skeptics wrong through an enter­taining movie with a funny and lik­able underdog super-hero. Three years later, Reed and Rudd try to replicate the same magic. Amid the large universe-saving exploits of the rest of the Avengers, the Ant-Man saga is yet again strung together with a scaled down personal adventures. And the results are mixed this time. We get knocked out by the amazing and smart fight scenes and snappy dialogues but the science-heavy story feels messy and crisscrosses at lightning speed between parallel sub-plots.

At one point of the movie, Hank and Hope have a jargoned discus­sion about quantum dimensions, and a perplexed Scott asks, “Do you guys put ‘quantum’ in everything?” This is a question that many audi­ence members would constantly ask while watching ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’.

Speaking of the villains, the movie has one evil-minded businessman Sonny Burch, played with effort­less sleaze and a cowboy drawl by actor Walton Goggins. Burch is after Hank’s high-tech science lab that can be easily shrunk into a rolling suit­case. Bruch wants to get his hands on the lab to strengthen his weapon business. Meanwhile a mysterious super-villain Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) is also after Hank’s lab for her own needs. Burch and Ghost create hurdles for Ant-Man and his team in their plan to safely rescue Hank’s wife.

When the story’s not spinning your head with long chatty scenes about ‘quantum’ stuff, the support­ing characters draw you in with their hilarious gags. In particular, Michael Pena as Scott’s expendable buddy and Abby Ryder Fortson as Scott’s feisty pre-teen daughter get to shine. But the show belongs to the 49-year-old funnyman Paul Rudd, who appears to be in his mid-30s in the movie. Unlike, say, Deadpool’s caustic sarcasm, Rudd’s Ant-Man benefits from the humor that ema­nates from his Average Joe likability and humanistic views. His scenes with his on-screen daughter are the film’s most poised and heartfelt ones, which in turn make up for his slack chemistry with Evangeline Lilly’s Hope.

Their performances nearly iron out the narrative excess of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’. It’s definitely a good outing at the big screen but I wouldn’t stress that this movie shouldn’t be missed.

Who should watch it?

Even without cameos from other superheroes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, loyal Marvel fans would derive a lot of pleasure from Ant-Man this time as well. As for those who prefer large scale adventure like the ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, they might be a little disappointed by the grounded approach of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’.

Crime Thriller

SICARIO 2: DAY OF THE SOLDADO

CAST: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabella Moner, Jeffrey Donovan

DIRECTION: Stefano Sollima

2018 is shaping up to be the year of sequels. First, it was ‘Dead­pool 2’ in May, followed by ‘The Incredibles 2’ in June. Gener­ally, sequels have a bad repute of unnecessarily trying to cash in on the popularity of their predecessors and getting away by doing pretty much the same thing all over again. But in the case of ‘Deadpool 2’ and ‘The Incredibles 2’ this didn’t apply. These follow-ups were no cheap knock-offs, and shoulder to shoul­der with their respective originals. And now ‘Sicario 2: Day of the Soldado’ gives us yet another reason to believe that a sequel can stand on its own. This second chapter retains the brooding demeanor of 2015’s “war on drugs” thriller ‘Sicario’ even though some key players from the original are missing. One nota­ble absence is director Denis Ville­neuve, who is known for his ability to elicit tension through his moody and minimalist direction.

‘Sicario 2’ has been directed by Italian filmmaker Stefano Sollima, who’s mostly known for his Italian crime drama ‘Gomorrah’ where Sollima’s anything but minimalist and draws towards excessive display of blood, gore and violence. The screenplay by Taylor Sheridan is more plot-driven this time and gives Sollima the opportunity to showcase his visual craft without departing from the original film’s muted tone.

‘Sicario 2’ opens with a series of terrorist suicide bombings in the US, which compel its government to seek the expertise of special CIA agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) who looks harmless in his cargo shorts and sandals but has questionable methods when it comes to infiltrat­ing his enemies. The government believes Mexican drug cartels are allowing Islamic terrorists to cross the border into US.

Graver’s given full authority to take care of the problem and play dirty if need be. He comes up with the idea of kidnapping a Mexi­can drug lord’s daughter (Isabella Moner) and make it look like the handiwork of a rival cartel leader, which would ultimately lead to a war between the cartels and favor the US government. To carry out the kid­napping, Graver recruits one of his most trusted and mysterious opera­tives, Alejandro (Benicio del Toro). But when their mission suffers a major setback—the US government finds itself at a risk of exposure for its unethical mission—Alejandro’s loyalty to his boss Graver is tested.

As the plot suggests, ‘Sicario 2’ develops more in the vein of action-adventure thrillers like the ‘Jason Bourne’ or ‘Mission Impos­sible’ series. It’s a drastic narrative change from the first ‘Sicario’ that was more a slow-burn mystery. Sol­lima handles the transition well. He’s able to orchestrate his action with a sense of unpredictability that keeps us on the edge of our seats throughout. The film is exquisitely shot by cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and hauntingly scored by Hildur Gudnadottir.

Del Toro and Brolin are two heavy­weight actors ably lifting the film on their capable shoulders. Del Toro has a hypnotic presence as Ale­jandro. The only backstory we get about Alejandro is that he used to work for the Mexican cartels before they killed his family. Graver has since been using Alejandro’s wrath for Mexican cartels to fuel his own agenda. Graver is really as a chame­leon: Mr. Nice Guy on the outside but underneath a person who can to any extreme to get what he wants.

Amid these seasoned performers is teenager Isabella Moner. Moner is feisty when we first meet her, beating up her classmate for cat calling her. As she slowly bonds with her kidnapper, Alejandro, she peels off her hardened edges and sees a father figure. Alejandro on the other hand sees his dead daughter in her.

‘Sicario 2’ benefits from the stellar acting and pulsating tension of the narrative. It may not be as cerebral and ambiguous as the first film. It does, however, intrigue and packs in plenty of surprises to make it a worthy sequel. Even when the film’s political ambitions are a bit muddled and stretched, it never fails as an action thriller.

Who should watch it?

‘Sicario 2’ is rated ‘A’ for violence and some may find it disturbing. But the film will be an ideal outing for viewers who want a taut thriller with plenty of violence.